Her conversations were mostly about her children and family. She never could have killed her husband, she told one cellmate; she loved him too much.
She was allowed visits only on Saturday with family members and her minister, separated by a sheet of unbreakable glass, and she cried after every visit.
Some of her cellmates were amazed when they learned that Barbara was charged with murder. She just didn’t seem like the type, they said. She was too nice a person.
She was such a nice person that the other inmates always turned off the TV in the cell block when the news came on because they knew that Barbara got upset when she heard the reports about herself. Later, not one would say an unkind thing about her.
Two weeks after Judge Bowen denied a reduction of Barbara’s bond, a group of family and friends came again to the courthouse. Her parents, an aunt and uncle and Barbara’s friends and neighbors, Dr. Warner Burch and his wife, Vivian, put up the deeds to their houses as collateral for Barbara’s bond, and she was freed to leave with them.
She moved in with her parents, who already had rented her house on Fox Drive to keep up the mortgage payments.
After Barbara’s release from jail, her family and a group of close friends joined in a supportive circle around her. Among the friends who rallied to her side were Vivian Burch, her daughter, Greta, her brother Steve’s girlfriend, Astrid Keizer, and Ginger Payne, another high school student whom Barbara had befriended at church.
But the three friends who would spend the most time with Barbara in the year that would elapse before her trial were Joan Towner, Carol Galloway and Sherry Sims.
Joan Towner met Barbara at Sunday school about two weeks after Russ’s death. Joan had been living in Durham for nearly a year and had made no friends since her arrival. Her husband, Norm, was about to undergo surgery, and her son, who was only a year older than Bryan, was in the Navy overseas.
Joan’s husband was confined at home after his surgery, and Barbara brought them meals and videotapes. She also began writing regularly to Joan’s son, who was homesick. As a result, Joan and Barbara had become close friends. Joan could not imagine a more giving and loving person than Barbara.
Carol Galloway had known Russ since he was married to Jo Lynn. After Russ married Barbara, they had moved into the same subdivision, Heather Glen, where Carol lived with her husband, Ralph, both of whom were also in their second marriages. Carol and Ralph knew Russ and Barbara through church and neighborhood encounters, but it really wasn’t until after Russ was killed that Carol got close to Barbara.
“We kind of took it on ourselves to help Barbara any way we could during the time of Russ’s death,” Carol later said. “We would invite Barbara over to our house for dinner, Barbara and Jason. During that time our friendship really began to blossom.”
Sherry Sims had known Russ and his family since she had started attending Grey Stone Baptist Church when she was thirteen. After she had grown up and married, her husband played with Russ on the church softball team. She first met Barbara at one of those games. Barbara, she thought, was sweet and attentive. “She made me feel real comfortable,” Sherry recalled years later. “She’s a little reserved, but once you get to know her, she’s outgoing, she’s funny.”
Sherry had lost touch with Barbara and Russ after they left Grey Stone, and later when she left Grey Stone herself for Homestead Heights, she was pleasantly surprised when Barbara and Russ had joined the church. Russ and Barbara were just as popular at Homestead as they had been at other churches they had attended. People wanted to be around them. They quickly became a force in the congregation.
Sherry would see them occasionally at church and chat for a few moments, but did not become closer to Barbara until Russ’s death. She was talking on the phone to a friend when her friend mentioned that Barbara had accidentally shot and killed Russ. Sherry couldn’t believe it. She had just seen them at church. Later, she would try to explain what that news did to her.
“I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I was miserable. I felt so bad for her. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. To me, the guilt I would feel would be tremendous, the regret. I kept thinking this must be horrible for her. I felt like God was telling me she was going to need my help.”
Sherry went to the funeral home to see Barbara on Tuesday night after the shooting. People were lined up out the door. Then Sherry spotted Barbara, who had stepped outside to get some air, but people were crowding around her even there. Barbara, Sherry would recall, was crying and shaking when she got to her.
“She hugged me real tight, and I told her I would be there for her and I would just help her any way I could.”
The following week, Sherry called Barbara and went to visit her. After that they got together at least once a week, sometimes just for lunch, sometimes for an afternoon. “She accepted me,” Sherry said. “She grew to trust me pretty quick, and I trust her, too. The Lord’s hand was in it.”
Sherry was aware that Barbara also had lost her first husband in a gun accident, and to her mind that made Russ’s similar death all the worse. “The thought never occurred to me that this was anything but an accident, a horrible accident, a freak accident, something that wouldn’t happen in a million years that just happened to happen to her.”
When Barbara was arrested, Sherry couldn’t believe it.
“I was appalled,” she said much later. “And I’m still appalled.”
Sherry immediately began writing to Barbara in jail. After a week, Barbara answered, and they began exchanging letters regularly. In her First letters, Barbara expressed disbelief at her situation and uncertainty about her future.
“I’m innocent,” she wrote. “Pray for me. I didn’t do it.”
Sherry replied that she never had any doubt of her innocence. She sent scripture and encouraged Barbara to keep her faith. God would take care of things.
“She started writing back for me to keep
my
faith, take care of
myself
,” Sherry recalled. “She’s a very encouraging person. She’s so concerned for other people.”
Barbara returned to church as soon as she was released from jail. Some of her family and friends were concerned about the reception she might receive, but everybody was friendly and supportive, and Barbara threw herself back into church activities, working with young people, cooking for the sick and delivering meals to their homes.
“The thing that helped Barbara the most was helping other people,” Sherry Sims said. “She’s such a good person. If you know her, you love her. She goes out of her way to do things for you. It’s just so many little things she does that make people love her.”
Barbara filled her time doing things for her parents, her brothers, her numerous aunts and uncles, her friends. Steve had moved into a small house of his own, and Barbara cleaned floors and varnished furniture for him. Barbara often baby-sat Carol and Ralph Galloway’s two-year-old son, Matt.
“My son and Barbara just kind of took to each other like glue,” Carol later recalled. “It got to the point where there were times when Matt would rather be with Barbara than he would with me.”
Barbara saw Carol at least three or four times a week, sometimes more. Carol frequently invited Barbara and Jason for supper. Often Barbara would come in the afternoon just to pick up Matt and take him to the park, or to McDonald’s. Matt was always excited about her coming. Barbara became such a part of the Galloway household that Carol gave her a key to the house so that she could come and go as she pleased.
Barbara’s lawyers had recommended that she keep as low a profile as possible, stay out of the public eye, avoid shopping for anything that might be deemed extravagant, by all means not be seen alone with a man. At times Barbara resented the restrictions. “It was like she had to stop living to keep people from thinking she wasn’t grieving,” said Sherry Sims, who saw Barbara as often as Carol did.
As the date of Barbara’s trial neared, her friends had to admire the way she faced it. Often she was more supportive to her friends and family than they could be to her.
“She tried to stay positive, keep negative thoughts out, to encourage us,” Sherry said. “I’m sure she was frightened and worried some of the time, but in her mind and her heart she’s innocent and she just couldn’t believe that a jury would think she was guilty.”
That was a refrain that Barbara kept repeating to all of her friends and family: “How could a jury find me guilty of something I didn’t do?”
25
Barbara was scheduled to appear in court again on June 6 for arraignment, but her lawyers, William Cotter and Richard Glaser, won a postponement until June 27. On June 24, however, Cotter and Glaser filed a written plea of not guilty and waived arraignment so that Barbara would not have to appear.
At the same time, the lawyers filed a flurry of motions, asking that the case be dismissed on various grounds, that the trial be moved because of the intense news coverage and that all evidence connected to Larry Ford’s death be suppressed in any trial that ensued. If the latter motion was not granted, the lawyers wanted a gag order to stop prosecutors from talking about the case.
On September 1, lawyers for both sides appeared before Judge Anthony M. Brannon, who was considered to be an expert on the rules of evidence, for a hearing to determine whether the trial should be moved from Durham County. Cotter and Glaser put up several witnesses, most of them friends of Barbara’s, to offer their opinions that Barbara could not get a fair trial in the county.
Judge Brannon agreed. He did not issue a ruling until early in January 1989, though, when he ordered that Barbara’s trial be moved from Durham County to Sanford in Lee County, forty-five miles away. Cotter had requested it be held in Charlotte, one hundred and forty miles to the southwest, the state’s largest city, where few people likely would have heard of Barbara Stager. Jurors there were also more apt to be sophisticated and not as likely to favor the death penalty.
By contrast, Lee was one of the state’s less populous and prosperous counties, and Sanford was a working-class town of fewer than 17,000 people. The county’s sustenance came from farming, processing poultry and manufacturing bricks, perfume, car parts and electronic equipment. Its people were largely conservative and God-fearing, people who believed in an eye for an eye.
Cotter had mixed reactions, pleased that the trial was being moved, disappointed that it would be in Lee County instead of a bigger city. But his disappointment was minor compared to the discouragement he felt at another ruling the judge made at the same time. Brannon denied Cotter’s motion to prevent any evidence of Larry Ford’s death from being introduced at Barbara’s trial. In effect, Cotter knew, he would now have to defend against two murders instead of the one for which Barbara had been charged. And he knew that the chances of doing so successfully were very slim.
As if that weren’t enough, more bad news was on its way. Early in February, Richard Glaser, who had done much of the preparatory work on Barbara’s case, told Cotter that he had received a job offer from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greensboro, and he felt that he had to take it. He withdrew from the case on February 15.
Not until more than a month later was Eddie Falcone appointed to assist Cotter in the Stager case. Age thirty-six, he mainly had handled domestic and traffic cases. He had never defended a client in a capital case. That didn’t really matter, however, because it was too late for him to get to learn enough about the case to have much effect.
Cotter assigned him to conduct the sentencing phase, a stage of the trial with which Barbara, despite Cotter’s foreboding, had become more and more convinced that she would not have to be bothered.
That was not Evenson’s feeling. He was pleased with the change in court venue. He thought that coldly executing a husband while he slept would not sit well with the people of Lee County. He had enough evidence to prove that Barbara had done exactly that. And now he thought that he would be able to show why.
Evenson had put more hours into the Stager case than any other, had spent so many evenings and weekends working on it that he worried about neglecting his family. Detective Rick Buchanan, who had continued his investigation on into the fall, had done the same, causing his wife to begin referring to Barbara as “the other woman” in his life. Despite all their work, though, one crucial aspect had eluded them: a solid motive.
Although Buchanan and his officers had spent many weeks tracking down rumors, all had proved to be just gossip. Buchanan had not turned up any evidence that Barbara had been having an affair at the time of Russ’s death, so she likely hadn’t shot him to be with somebody else. The anonymous tip Buchanan had received about Russ’s affair had proven false as well, ruling out jealousy. And Russ’s life insurance seemed unlikely to offer the sole incentive for his murder. Something else must have prodded Barbara to act, Evenson and Buchanan thought, and if they couldn’t find it, they feared that a jury might be willing to accept her story of an accident.
During the long months of investigation, thousands of pages of documents had accumulated, and Evenson and Buchanan sifted through them time and again looking for some overlooked clue that might lead them to a more substantial motive than Russ’s insurance. As fall of 1988 had arrived they decided to ask for help from people who knew Russ better, who might be able to spot something that they had missed: Russ’s mother and his former wife, Jo Lynn. Buchanan delivered boxes of documents—interviews, financial records, cancelled checks—to the Stager house, and although some of the material was startling and painful to her, Doris spent hour after hour poring through it, filling legal pads with notes. Jo Lynn came at night and on weekends to help her, and they sent pages of observations and suggestions to Evenson.